


Their Bones

by bright_roaring_blue



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Bay Movies), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Comics), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Interspecies Relationship(s), Light BDSM, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:54:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bright_roaring_blue/pseuds/bright_roaring_blue
Summary: Across this universe, or any other... She knew him down to their bones, knew just how and what and why he was.And she was going to save them both.
Relationships: Donatello/April O'Neil (TMNT)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Not Out Of The Woods Yet

When Donatello came to, the portal was still in his lab.

At least, that’s the first thing his brain told him it was. He’d caught its appearance in his periphery when the vibrating whine began, so loud it made his teeth rattle. There had been a sudden pressure, and he’d called out in confusion. Trying to pop his ears, he’d barely registered an extra _thwip_ before the room rocked on its axis. 

It was still cockeyed - no, that was his glasses. His arms were on lockdown and his diaphragm was experiencing lag - _crap,_ even moving his neck was hard, _why?_

Which led him to question whether this was simply the other side of sleep-deprivation. To be fair, the portal hadn’t looked remotely similar to the theoreticals: not even an aperture, just a tear where his workbench used to be. No gravitational anomaly, no flickering lights, just - _heeeeek_ and _urgk_ and _thwip_.

Auditory hallucinations and muscle weakness, headaches - but none of that explained why the air smelled… _charred._ Was there fire?

“No, it’s fine.”

Donatello followed the voice up, up, up. A stinging glow threw the man in relief without detail, a shadow of a man in chrome and black. 

“I said he’s _fine._ Focus, and you, _kid_ -” White dots sparked like the fourth of July. “Put the freak-out on mute. It’s a distraction and I am not - _crap!_ ”

The behemoth snarled curses as the fireworks stuttered, then inexplicably reversed course. A nervous beeping trilled as giant gloves snapped the sparkles of light back into formation, faster and faster. “ _Hoooh, you bastards_ ,” he growled low, “you are _so_ in for it. _”_

The beeping wound tighter. Donatello’s face went numb: he knew that song by heart, had tasted it on his fingertips.

“She’s gonna wipe you off the _fucking map -”_

Which meant the holographic display blazing with biometrics, that glowing walnut-shape the man was playing with -

“Come on, baby, where are you?”

April, _where was April?_ Craning his neck - _he’d feel that later, for sure, but it was worth it because_ \- he found her a meter to his left. 

Limp on the concrete, she was cast in the display’s sickly glow; if his arms could move, he could reach out and warm her. Her little jacket wasn't - poor April, she was shivering.

 _No._

No, she was having a seizure.

“Come on, _come on_ \- _bastards -_ ”

And he was trapped in his body, watching in mute terror as alarms screeched and lights flashed danger-red and she choked for air as this hulking _bastard_ _toyed with her_ _brain._

Donatello’s helplessness boiled into rage.

“And _you._ ” The behemoth leveled a fist between Don’s eyes. “I have neither the time nor the capacity to be your emotional support right now.”

_Thwip._

So. Round two.

The portal was still there, a pulsing scar in the middle of his workbench. His tongue was coated with bile and a dull throbbing stretched his skull, but otherwise, it was _continue from saved,_ stiff muscles and all.

There was a deep, quiet muttering. _This_ guy again. He loomed huge and dark in the periphery. Nothing much beyond his eyelids was ready to cooperate, but _soon_ ; Donatello was already planning the guy’s itinerary:

One: kick-out from the floor, hook the right ankle, punch to dislocate the left knee - topple, pin, separate him from his gear. 

Two: subdue and secure with extreme prejudice: use all the zip-ties, if necessary. 

Three: assess April without panicking. 

Four: scream until his brothers came running, with mild panic. 

Five: back to April - begin medical interventions. 

Six: isolate the intruder, interrogate, then _personally_ send one metal bastard into orbit -

An amused snort came from beneath the cowl. “You’re welcome to try.”

One _psychic_ metal bastard. _Crap._

Who had come through a portal to experiment on April; the holo-display was hidden from view, but it had very clearly shown her brain going haywire, sending her into a full-on grand mal episode - _what in Darwin’s name had this cretin done to her?_ Why wasn’t she moving?

Moving his head put his stomach on a tilt-a-whirl, and he choked back fear and acid.

“For the love of -” The sigh that followed was equal parts frustration and compassion. “ _She’s stable,_ okay? Observe.”

Light jabbed his eyes as the holo-display dipped into view. Pulse, respiration, O2 sat, _everything April_ had settled back into tidy, neutral levels. “She’s not out of the woods yet,” the intruder warned, “until then, you _will_ remain calm. You will be silent, you will self-regulate, because if you distract her again I will dial up the amperage until it fries your nines. That understood?”

He’d been _tased?_ Oh, the _indignity_ of it all -

“Acknowledge, or I do it as a preemptive measure.”

Seething fury worked his teeth against one another, but not apart. Donatello worked his finger in a double-tap against the concrete. 

It felt like a darn victory.

“Thank you.” It was more snarl than gratitude. Which, _rude._ But the man shifted back far enough that Donatello had a clearer view of April, so he wouldn’t complain.

She was so pale, so terrifyingly still. For a moment he just counted the rise and fall of her chest, let relief flush the tightness from his own. Goosebumps prickled over her bare arms; they escaped the giant’s notice, his attention completely absorbed by the holo-display.

Donatello gazed up in awe.

April - _oh, Darwin,_ he already regarded her as the most singular being in all creation, _but this,_ her brain - was art in motion. Shimmers of light threaded the nest of her cerebellum, danced along the lovely hidden curls of her insular cortex. No sound, but to Donatello it made a symphony, a ballet of a hundred million miracles - okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic -

Her body shivered with a deep inhale, then relaxed. Guilt stabbed him as realized he’d been so distracted and fascinated that he’d lost sight of the state of her.

The stranger gave another snort, softer now. “Nothing,” he replied to the turtle’s silent question. “Releasing pulmonary-assist, whenever you’re ready.”

What - he was talking to _April?_ Lights beneath her shirt flashed wildly; the gloved fingers fished beneath her neckline to remove the trio of silver discs. Another set came away from her throat with beads of blood, and the sight of it nearly sent Donatello into another spiral of panic. “Sedation's wearing off. Better?”

Her eyes shifted behind closed lids, but otherwise, April lay still and silent. A gloved thumb brushed tenderly over her throat, and Donatello’s hands itched with the need to break this guy’s fingers.

And then he counted them.

“Oh, good. I see deductive capabilities are finally reintegrating.”

That wry voice was low, gritty. Unmistakable, it rang in his ears as Donatello squinted past the tactical blacks. Colour stretched wide across the man’s biceps, full sleeves of bright ink crawling up under that vest and dark cowl. His gear included a frame on his back, half rivets, half dented to hell, with - 

Cold prickled over Donatello’s face. His shell - _his shell,_ it was _welded_ on there.

“Your full facilities should return before she returns to consciousness. She’s going to need care - hey!” A boot nudged his thigh; dizzy with impossibility, he realized the - the _he_ was speaking to _him._ “Get it together. She needs you on point, so if you need to throw up, do it now.”

Donatello forced a small shake of his head; the spin it gave him made him reassess, but he breathed low and steady, and did it again.

“She’ll need electrolytes and bedrest, non-negotiable. Continue to monitor her for the next twenty-four hours. No alcohol, caffeine, aspirin or NSAIDs for forty-eight, return to light duty pending clinical assessment. She’ll fight you about caffeine - _do not_ give in, you hear me?”

Donatello tapped the concrete again, flexed his palms. Almost, almost…

“And _you_.” Sweeping April’s dark fringe from her brow, the _he_ bent; her face disappeared beneath his cowl as _his_ mouth brushed her skin. The words spilled over with affection, and wonder. “You’re fucking terrifying.”

Another kiss was too much to be borne: rage powered Donatello into a trembling crouch. The behemoth rose to full height and glared from beneath the cowl and that black mask.

It froze the blood in his veins, if such a thing were possible.

“Get it together,” he repeated in warning. “ _Do not_ disappoint me.”

Six heavy steps took the intruder out of view. There was a hissing pressure between Donatello’s ears, and his jaw flexed to pop it when - it suddenly eased.

The portal was gone.

No dramatic whoosh, no post-it notes fluttering about in dazed confusion. His workbench wasn’t even disrupted; everything was as it had been before, except -

“April.” The floor was a slip-and-slide as Donatello wobbled the final few feet to her side. “April, open your eyes. Please, _please_ respond.” Pulling up his biometrics screen, he flicked his goggles in place to catch the readings. Her brainwaves were - _weird_ , this was _weird_ , what - what was he even looking at? But besides a high level of cortisol, _high, very high, but dropping, okay that wasn't awful_ , she was - “You’re safe. It's okay," he was babbling, reassuring them both, “it's okay, he’s gone now.”

Her eyes were still closed, lips dry and - a little pale, and she was still on the cold, hard concrete. Cupping her nape, he moved to shift her head over his thigh - small comfort he could offer, while his muscle coordination queued back up - and felt the curious sensation of -

_all things returned to balance_

“April?” His voice shook on the repeat. “April. Talk to me, please?”

Breath shivered from her lungs, and he felt her exhaustion - _felt it_ in his bones.

In his mind, it played out before he felt it: her slim palm lifting to his neck, drawing him down, down, down to her. His arm bridged over her head, supporting his weight as he watched his own face draw so close he saw her own reflection in his glasses - no, that wasn’t right.

Was it brain damage? It was the logical explanation.

And then -

Lips pressed together with the softness of promise. The sensation was amazing, strange, brief before - it was _burning,_ not his lips. Not the air, but in his skull - his brain was _on fire_ -

The world blazed white and he was dying.


	2. The Little Mermaid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tasted the chalky painkillers on the man’s tongue, the grinding ache in bones that didn’t want to be his.

He wanted to call for her, but his lips wouldn’t move. He couldn’t feel her hand, or his body - he didn’t _have_ a body. 

This wasn’t dying, just suspension in space and time, existing and not-existing simultaneously. Schrödinger's turtle. He would have laughed if his lungs existed here.

Though he couldn’t feel her hand, he knew April was with him. Not there, on bed; that woman was… older. And _naked,_ _hoooh, she was naked._ She had all the softness of a gentle life: unmarred skin, a creamy, pleasing roundness. He watched her tuck her a lock of copper hair behind her ear - _so short, mature, how striking_ \- and she angled toward the figure sitting at the opposite side of the bed. 

It was a spindly Asian man. He was nude as well.

Donatello hated him instantly.

Twisted fingers struggled with prescription bottles as April settled on her knees behind him. The dry-swallow of pills screamed _routine,_ and then he worked an injection into the hollow of his stomach.

This April, _so very, very naked_ , grazed her cheek across his bony shoulder. Acid jealousy splashed through his very being. 

_How strange, to feel that without a body._

A slow hitch built in the man’s breath. April dropped kisses down the razor of his spine as shivers grew to full body shudders. The air was evaporating from his lungs, but the kisses didn’t stop, only gentled: he was grateful for the anchor as prickling heat rose. 

Perspiration slicked his back despite the cool coming through the window. And he felt -

Donatello felt a breeze chase over his bald, sweaty temples. He tasted the chalky painkillers on the man’s tongue, the grinding ache in bones that didn’t want to be his. Fire raged through his insides, _no, lava_ , in his intestines and his lungs and he couldn’t think, couldn’t brace against the next surge, just choke on air and -

_easy Donnie just breathe I’m here_

\- submit to the agony until the inferno burned itself out. 

It felt like years, before he clawed back to awareness. 

Words like _maintenance dose_ and _chronic_ floated across his mind, he realized it wasn’t over. The echoes of pain would linger for days, in every stretch and every breath. He flexed four fingers against his thumb and felt oddly homesick - then instantly guilty.

Trickles of peace cooled his brain in tune with the brush of lips across his back. April - _this_ one, this _soft, plush_ April - rested her cheek lightly against his sweaty shoulder blade. And it _hurt_. Every inch of his skin screaming like it’d been scraped raw from the inside out. 

Yet Don tipped his head back and sank into the moment. The sweat cooling on his chest, the shape and weight of April’s breasts and their weight across his back, he reveled in it as best he could. Her sigh came damp and salty over his neck, a balm as this beautiful woman held him up, with body and breath.

_love you so much_

She held him up and drew the bitterness away. 

A breeze made quiet rustles of the sheet, and in the distance, a siren mewled. It sent tension creeping through his sore muscles, stilled her quiet breath behind him. They both quietly prayed that it wouldn’t -

The sleepy call burbled from down the hall. “Papa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is heavily influenced by music: the piece 'Uncertain Changes' inspired this particular chapter.


	3. Worship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Kunoichi. His vicious princess.

The weight across his back was familiar now. Left marginal scutes felt scraped raw, but it was nothing that needed medical attention.

But she did. _The Kunoichi._

She'd made a small miscalculation. _Slight,_ but enough to allow a Foot blade to graze her thigh. Though _he_ would never accuse her of being sloppy, the word had been drilled into her: it sliced her mind like a knife. She sent her own through the soldier’s neck in retaliation.

An extra flick of her wrist gave her opponent an almost balletic spin, and arched arterial spray _away_ from them. _Beautiful_. The attention to detail - _hoooh, yes_... 

His vicious princess knew just how to turn him on.

He hummed his appreciation and felt a gentle scratch across his thoughts. She was listening, and her answer: an impression of fresh bruise over her hip. It was the perfect shape of his thumb, an invitation to peel her uniform down and _lick it._ The Ninja stretched his breath to slow the swell of his excitement. “Use your words,” he challenged, “and maybe I will. _Later._ ”

Above her face mask, the Kunoichi arched a brow. His thigh seared hot, so sudden and sharp that it drove him to his knees. Pain ebbed, then flared again as she amplified her own agony just for him. And then -

_\- the image of that bruise, and a future matching-set kissing her thighs as took her from behind, his fingers bridged in a lock behind her neck, stretching her arms up, up, up, as she clawed at the back of his head, calling for him and only him -_

And now he was hard enough to fight with it. “That’s just _mean_ ,” he hissed. “My brothers are still out here.”

“And?” she taunted low. He got the impression of mischief, of how she could reach for their minds, call them over in an instant, if that’s what he was asking her to _-_

“Don’t. You. Dare,” he snarled.

She dropped the word _jealous?_ across his tongue, but that wasn’t quite right. _Possessive, maybe_ : the idea of anyone viewing her splendor made his blood boil, he’d freely admit, though he didn’t care if the world watched her bring him to his knees -

What he cared about right now was that she’d _stopped_. 

Pain in his thigh had dulled to a throb, then vanished. Had she exhausted herself, mentally? Was the wound worse than he’d thought? “Let me see that leg.”

His move to rise reversed: the Ninja found himself pressed seiza to the roof. Arms hung dead at his sides, useless - what - _the little minx had locked him out of control over his own limbs_. “Seriously?”

Then she _ignored him_ , turned and began to clean her blades of - _with_ her latest frustration. The black of her opponent’s uniform erased the blood, leaving the steel immaculate. He didn’t bother with even a token struggle while he watched: this was a show, and she was putting it on just for him.

It brought to mind the _last_ time she’d cleaned a weapon with that sort of meticulous attention. Of how she sucked him clean of her juices, how she’d left every inch of him left as shining and hard and ready as those knives, _hoooh, boy_ … 

He pushed the pictures at her, just a little payback - and felt her nipples tighten as if they were his own. 

Which - was new. Kinky, even for them.

He was already brainstorming new ways to experiment with this when she stopped an infuriating inch from his hands. He had wanted to see, after all, and that brush over his mind hummed that, now she was making sure he could do no more than that.

Mean. She was _so_ _mean_.

He loved it.

But his princess seemed hell-bent on toying with him. She needed - _words, my prince, they’re so important, after all -_

“Shut up.” Rocking forward, he shoved his beak against her mons. He nipped at her through the fabric, and the shock sent a flash of heat through her, into him. His arms were suddenly his own again, and the Ninja fought the base urge to palm himself. 

Instead, he cupped the sweet spot behind her thighs. His grip was perfectly calibrated force; if she was chasing new bruises, he wouldn’t make her work too hard for them. He was a gentleman, after all.

And also a touch pissed, that she'd started this _here_. So he nuzzled her broadly, just wrong enough to have her squirming for a more focused touch; she moaned in mounting frustration behind that high mask. Yet - she didn’t force his will _._ She didn't rush him, just stood there letting him work her up with his face and - okay, yeah, he wasn't going to pretend this was all for her sake.

The rest of the city, the rest of the night, his brothers, the sirens in the distance - everything melted away, but this, and her. _Do you feel it through me, April?_ he asked silently. He let her open the folds of his brain, feel where she lived in the deepest parts of him. _Can you feel me? Can you taste it?_

She trailed invisible fingers through his lust, his respect, his raging possessiveness. He felt her shivery delight in his tender devotion, and it flowed back, through their bond: her admiration and loyalty, her unflinching faith in him. He tasted her almost sexual fascination with his mind, her desire for his strange - _unique, Don, you’re perfect -_ body.

But above all else, he felt this transcendent creature, the closest thing to a god he’d ever kneel before, he felt her chose _him_ as her sole devotee... because out of the whole darn world, _she loved him best_.

He gave another joyful nuzzle, followed it with his teeth until she begged and sighed. _Tell me, princess._ He wanted her chasing more, writhing against his beak, overwhelmed with both their feelings. _Give me the words._

“Donatello-oh,” _please,_ _I want -_ “I want you, please -”

But he could be mean, too.

A flat, green thumb pressed the shallow edge of the slice on her thigh: he watched pain spark bright over her as she bucked against his jaw. Her gasp was the same feeling as his name, shivering hot as he pinned her between pain and love and pleasure. “I want to finish this in our bed,” he growled hungrily.

 _Yes!_ She was losing speech, drifting into nothing more than impressions of need. “And,” _more, oh please,_ “then -”

_\- his fingers working purple sutures into her thigh, his handiwork and his love, knotting his colour in her skin -_

Hoooh, fuck. “ _Wicked_ princess.”

 _My prince. My love._ It was almost savage, her conviction, her adoration. _All mine._

A surge of tenderness crashed over him; he didn’t even bother to stand fully, just knelt up to press his face to her ribcage. Those deadly, graceful hands cradled his nape, as he rubbed his cheeks over the steady beat of her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: a little strange, kinda violent, very kinky, deeply possessive and definitely bloodthirsty duo. Pain-play, blood and psychic threats/promises.
> 
> Inspiration for this chapter is 'Movement' by Hozier.


	4. Breathe the Oak King Anew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An invitation, a longing, uncertain and unsure.

She loves when he does this. When he rubs his cheeks over her breasts, her belly, breathes love against her skin, he can feel her delight.

_erotic_

He loves it, too, even if he’s never sure if it’s his pleasure, or hers, she is delighting in. To be fair thought, that there’s anything at all to delight in is something of a minor miracle.

The first thing she’d done back then was dig her fingernails into his scalp and set his brain on fire. 

_she’d known what she was doing, that time_

He had the strangest sense of express purpose, of _forest management,_ as if miles of him were torched to clear the way for something new; a sincere, fiery hope, that a single seed would pop its casing, roused from ancient sleep.

But even a controlled fire burned at a thousand degrees, and it blistered and peeled him raw as he screamed in a space where no one could hear.

Orderlies had torn them apart, and Don gasped in sweet relief.

“Is it green?” she rasped, or maybe he’d only thought she had; either way, he’d ran - wheeled - fled the ward.

_terrified both of us because_

Lieutenant April O’Neil was the only living victim of the Kraang’s Psychic Blitz.

She was fighting the restraints, screaming at ghosts. Incoherent and utterly mad, his fierce and vibrant April, his boyhood crush, his staunch friend and ally, was gone. All that remained was a hollow husk wearing her face.

He didn’t even bother with a needle that night, just cried himself dry into a thin, dreamless sleep.

_at the time, she wondered if she was dead or simply waiting_

Morning broke harsh and surprisingly late. The sheets flaky with dried sweat. His mouth tasted like rotting onions. He ached like just flipped a hundred tanks with his bare hands, and he just wanted to curl into a ball and hide. Reflex had him reaching for the syringe in his nightstand.

There was a brush of something fresh, like a crisp dawn, too faint to put his finger on. Donatello couldn’t say if that’s what stalled him, but he curled his hand back. And waited.

For a minute, he stared up at concrete.

He stared, fresh sweat drying as he lay there in dread, waited for the nausea, the tingling fire to consume his absent legs, just - lay there and forced himself to wait. Wait.

Long minutes.

Just wait. He could wait.

An hour.

Wait.

Two hours ticked by as his heart pounded so hard he thought he would die, as he sobbed himself dry, as he screamed at mysteries and laughed so hard almost fell out of his bunk. 

The phantom pain was gone.

He didn’t notice that strange breeze again, but, to be fair, he was busy getting clean.

Withdrawal was milder than he had any right for it to be. Medical called it a Christmas miracle, and praised the mutagen in his blood. He had a few dark days, but all in all, his five-year love affair with opiates took only a few long weeks to kill. 

By March, the dark circles under his eyes faded purple to olive and he didn’t even - his face looked so strange without them.

A dozen weeks later, Leonardo asked him to sit in on an intel debrief. Cook stopped growling, “eat both portions, for chrissake”. His brothers, other people stopped avoiding him.

One day, Michelangelo cracked a joke about their collective missing limbs and he laughed. A good laugh, light and effortless, and Donatello realized -

Even in a world gone to hell, he could feel _real_ again.

It took another ten weeks to gather his courage, and return to what was left behind of April O’Neil.

The staff kept her sedated as much as possible. Her screaming was too disruptive, apparently, unpredictable and terrifying - there was nothing they could do for her.

He was allowed to wheel to her bedside as long as he didn’t touch the restraints.

A tap at her arm gave no response. “April?” Her beautiful eyes were dull and unfocused, her gaze wandering like a ghost. “Can you - hear me?”

_Even now, you shy away from that memory, my love._

Donatello hadn’t been sure _what_ he was expecting, really. Certainly not the breeze of cool daybreak inside his skull, with April’s voice. 

_green_

He’d flailed in his shock, knocked over her IV, made a ruckus. Screamed like a sissy.

 _the embarrassment was_ _his? or hers?_

_Back then? I’d have to say both._

Was he losing his mind? Some misfire in his brain? Fear clawed hot in his throat, as he fought the urge to run, to hide, to find a needle and numb himself out somewhere until calm returned.

A withering came over him, like fruit dying on a vine. It snapped his panic back on itself, had him begging, “Wait! I’m sorry, don’t - come back, please! How -”

Donatello pulled from training, half-forgotten, attuned all his sense to the still figure and - and - and _felt_ her dawning cool and new and tangible across his mind. Another focused breath, and it was almost… “April.” He clasped the paper-thin skin of her hand. “Can you hear me? Can you answer?”

Nothing simple, like yes or no.

_not sure what he’d been expecting, after all_

Instead, he had a sense of a great yawning emptiness. It stretched dark and infinite. Bodily awareness wasn’t muted here, it was - was _gone_. He couldn’t feel his own tongue in his mouth, his wheelchair, or air. He was suspended without orientation or any concept of time. There was _nothing_ here, nothing but the vastness and a tingling memory of how he used to be a person.

It was complete sensory deprivation. Full body phantom pain.

“The sedatives.” This was stuff even _he_ wouldn’t have touched, and she’d drugged to the gills since he’d -

“Oh, no.” _Oh, April. My love, I’m so sorry._ “We have to get you off the meds.”

Not that the staff believed him. Most of them knew him as the broken one, the bitter, leggless junkie who squandered his usefulness inventing new ways to get numb.

But Donatello was clean now, shrunken but _clean_ , and so very, very persuasive. Maybe it was pity, but they indulged him, dialing back April’s next dose slightly. She was still restrained.

It was enough.

And it _was_ her. Sort of.

Her broken tangents whispered across his mind, faster now. _green, not whole, but new?_ Comfort whispered over the stumps of his thighs. _is he green and new?_

“Yeah.” He was awed, against all science and reason. “Yes. I’m - so much better.”

_but how, he asks?_

Plucking the questions straight out of his head: nope, wasn’t creepy at all. “Yes. What - can you tell me what you did?”

A brief violent agony seared him. The Blitz, he felt its echoes ripping her asunder. He _felt_ her dissolve, become nothing and go everywhere, no more than a scatter of molecules spiraling across the universe. But then, by some miracle - no, by sheer dint of will - she brought it all to a grinding halt. Collected her electrons, and reversed the process, and forced herself back into existence.

But she was too hasty. Terrified and in pain, she stitched up the fragments of her consciousness, forcing things however they fit. The result was a nasty jigsaw that was still right shape in the end, but distorted, wrong.

 _insane?_ She answered in her own dry humour, his spinning mind, _he can use the word..._

_No. You were just different, my love._

She was more careful when she put him back together, though. He could feel her tenderness as she pinched off broken nerve endings in his legs, pruned back damage. With precision and care, she had coaxed his shriveled body back into balance: serotonin, dopamine, leptin, ghrelin, melatonin, testosterone, insulin, cortisol - everything, _everything_.

She had spent years in the wasteland of him, though it felt like only seconds, spent entire seasons renewing him and every inch of him felt refreshed, reinvigorated, hungry and vital and -

_Oh, oh, my love, oh -_

Vigorous. Um, yeah, he’d noticed the return of that, too.

His self-consciousness made her withdraw slightly, as if she felt his shame. _he feels embarrassment_

_and does he still?_

_No, my love, not anymore._

“No! Well, uh, not really. It’s fine. Better than fine - April, I’m…” But there were no words to share gratitude, entire dictionaries would never be enough. 

_she knows,_ April answered, _she knows and she feels…_

The thought trailed off, uncertain and hollow. “Are you okay, here? Are - are you in any pain?”

_she is unaware_

“What do you mean?” He found his first finger tracing lines on her palm. “Can you feel this?”

Emptiness drifted across his mind again. _unaware, conscious of him… she is here but not here_

“But - wait.” He grappled with that, mind spinning as dread soured his stomach, “I thought the meds were…”

But they weren’t. She might have been able to pull her body back from ash, but something fragile had been severed. Everything that made her _April_ was trapped in a vacuum, a nothingness more complete than what he’d once so diligently cultivated.

It was the cruelest irony.

His throat was tight and for a moment he didn’t trust himself to breathe. “Can I… do anything?”

He had the impression of laying back on a patch of sun-warmed grass. An invitation, a longing, uncertain and unsure. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

 _what he feels?_ She asked with something tender, like hope, _will he share?_

“How would I -”

There was an unmooring deep in his brain. Something that felt like being airborne, without needing to jump too hard. Like the drugs, yet stranger… nearly effortless. Warm, almost like the first - and he flinched from remembered pain.

Again, the withering, _April_ , April curling in on herself, ashamed and alone.

“No! It’s - fine, it’s fine.” No, but he could _try_ , for a minute he could - he could _try._ It took a minute to dry his sweaty palms. Should he… touch her? Was that wrong? 

Turned out, he didn’t have to. With a breath of focused he sort of… fell.

No agony this time. He drifted, just… sank into infinity and landed in her. 

In her mind, her red hair was only just starting to silver. The pale streaks played gamine and soft around her face. She probably wasn’t aware that the doctors kept it shaved.

_he would have preferred her younger, maybe? whole?_

_Just as you are, my love, whenever you are._

Somewhere at the edge of his awareness was the idea that this place was, could be, whatever he wanted it to be. He could be whatever he wanted - ten feet tall, tanned skin, human or -

_just him, as he is_

He felt honoured. Humbled. Anxious and excited and unworthy and used up and such a disappointment. He was a wasted thing, riddled with holes, constellations scoring his arms meaner and uglier than the ones he found in her eyes.

Representing himself faithfully to her was a special kind of torture, but her smile held only welcome. Like she knew him, down to the atoms of him, and maybe she did; yet still, she delighted in his imperfections. She breathed satisfaction over his brainwaves, trailed her fingertips over his lashless eyelids like he was something precious -

_because he is_

_and he still is_

\- and he cried.

And after, he took her palm in his. With his three fingers, he gave each tender attention. He telegraphed what it felt like, to touch her, be touched by her. Palms became wrists, arms, the soft hollows of elbows. And when his blunt nails scratched lightly, the sound she made -

_still embarrassment?_

_Never, my love, no, oh, oh -_

A shape of his name came cushioned on her sigh. _he feels_ , she reveled, _she feels him and he feels -_

“What?”

_erotic_

_divine_

_love_

It wrapped in her mind, a silk ribbon gliding through his; it was better than any sex he’d ever had. Any love -

_please_

_This was never just any love, April._

_may she share it with him?_

“Yes. Oh, April -” _my love._

_It was ours._

To her, himself, he vowed, _I’ll help you be green, too._

They tried a few times to wean her off the sedatives. The screaming brought them back to square one: she never could hold a conversation out here in the real, and eventually the doctors stopped trying.

And that was hard. Her team, his brothers, everyone finally mourned her. Leonardo added her picture to his _butsudan._ Raphael wouldn’t speak her name for months. Michelangelo stopped visiting her bedside; the last of his daisies browned and crunched and were finally swept away.

Donatello replaced them with a potted orchid, and tended it faithfully.

_he makes her green and new_

Now, he shows her little differences in him, from this day to that - a cut on his thumb, the new lines around his mouth. She has no other way to mark the days here, but in the space they share, time is immaterial.

There’s more to his life to his face now and muscle is finally coming back. It’s slow work. Maybe he’ll never be what he once was, but he can make her laugh by balancing over her on his stubbed thighs, counting a thousand push ups with kisses in between. In here, it’s no effort at all.

She loves when he does that.

He loves that she loves it, that she loves to laugh with him. Laughter is a minor miracle, a rare and precious thing these days. Even if this is only his delight felt through her.

_she and he, both green_

_Only when we’re together._

Even if no one else can hear them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: drug references, addiction/recovery, medical issues, body issues, angst and a-sad-sort-of-ever-after. Inspired in part by the world of SAINW, in part by 'Crystallize' by Lindsay Sterling.


	5. Killing It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yeah, you’re a riot,” he scoffed.  
> “Bet’cher green ass I am.”  
> They were penned in, but they were pretty damn amazing.

She was back again. 

_Damnit._

Hamato pressed cold fingers to his eyelids and bit back a groan like screaming. 

See, that was the drawback of going crazy: once you leaned in, it was _no brakes, all_ _acceleration_. A little writing on the walls one month slid into a seeing ghosts the next - or maybe it had been less? Sleep-cycles had never been his most reliable metric. But with no pattern to the pieces Saki’s researchers carved from him, no human interaction beyond sedation, no company but his own regrets - Hamato had been in desperate need of distraction.

 _Crazy_ had been the easiest thing to reach for.

Gouging the drywall had been a warm-up. The abstract, circular equations had terrorized his handlers beautifully before he turned his attention to the white coats. _Red-shirts_ now. They had thrown enough guards in the mix to keep things fresh, and he’d managed to reduce the staff by thirty percent. And he’d been aiming for thirty-five... or had been, until the boys in the lab mixed a cocktail strong enough to gas him.

Which - honestly, he wasn’t even angry about that anymore. It passed the time quicker, and the psychoactive side effects? _Hoooh, boy._ Even with of the migraine of reentry, Hamato could see himself getting dangerously recreational with this stuff.

Today’s queasy headache came with a stinging clean in his empty eye socket. That, and O’Neil hovering over his IV, staring him down with something like _relief,_ which meant he’d graduated to hallucinations _without_ chemical assistance.

No brakes. All acceleration.

It scared him. It scared him enough to try to shut her out again.

He’d perfected the art of walling her out of his mind. The year spent in her bed, he’d learned to grit his teeth against her pull as she burned them up like stars. He’d learned to make a cold, calculated love to her body, and feign sleep as her emotions drew back into herself. He’d learned it was easier if he didn’t say her name.

The glow of their connection eventually bleached and withered. A few months later, she stopped answering his knock.

And then she was _gone_ , and he was _here,_ and she was still haunting him.

Maybe the biggest problem with opening yourself up to _crazy_ was that all your other shit started joining forces with it. This was just regret taking another turn racing him around the twist. Had to be _,_ because only someone nucking-futs would picture his dead lover dressed as Foot, trussed in Kevlar and grease paint - and it was _still_ making him yearn.

Forget leaning in, he’d swan-dived into the abyss. 

Her small fingers rested lightly on his shell. He couldn’t feel her touch, never would again; it twisted his lungs with a soul-deep pain that had him longing to be gassed once more. “I want you in my arms, O’Neil,” he lamented, “not my head.”

“Well, that's too damn bad.”

There was no warning before she jacked his brain. 

His temples throbbed with the sudden influx of floorplans, combatants, inventory; she even showed him how to start the chopper, just _downloaded_ everything straight into his head.

Just before he gathered the air to scream, the pain evaporated. His vision zeroed out, but when it came back she was still there, grease paint and all.

 _No._ This was some trick, because that had _hurt._ Nothing like the comfortable slide into her mind, the one he’d fought so long ago; his brainstem tingled with unfamiliar spice, but it wasn’t _warm_. There was something was jagged here, _wrong_ and sharp and -

A wall slammed against his temples that screamed _Don’t_. “I said, get up.”

The pain was real enough. And she - “You’re _alive?!_ ”

“And I’m still laughing,” she replied flatly. Air _ooofed_ from his chest under the drop of boots and gear, and his spring-loaded naginata, prototype nine. “Happy Hanukkah. Now get dressed.”

Shock and gratitude bloomed in his chest and left no room to breathe. He steadied himself against the bedframe, reveling in the ache. It was real, this was real, _O’Neil alive_ and _here_ and she was rushing him out the door because, _“_ UEHA’s sending HPBs.”

“For the building?” No, _for Manhattan, oh damn, they were going to carpet-bomb the borough._ “Who’s on our team?”

“You,” she answered with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“And?”

“Me.”

Weird as dual-perspective was, they were making it work. 

He’d fought the shift instinctively. Three eyes was too many for his brain to juggle and he was seasick standing still, _damn, oh damn,_ give him a minute -

Cool trickled down his gullet as she stamped down his nausea. _Neat trick_ , if weirdly invasive. He needed it a second time as he toggled between her depth perception and his lack. “ _Stay out of your head_ , I know,” the words were flat, terse, “but we need every advantage.”

“It’s fine.” Give him a minute, and he could work with this.

Hamato turned away from his own bandaged face to check the hall, simultaneously watching her disappear around the corner of the door. This was a converted hospital in Saki’s holdings. From what he could tell, it was mostly used for detainment and research; run by skeleton crew, thanks to his staff reduction efforts, but the place was crawling with Legions. “Those are new,” he muttered as she shot one - two, three - down.

“And now they're scrap,” she sniffed. On the reload, she aimed his attention over her shoulder to the bot coming down the hall. “Your turn.”

The crunch of the patrol bot’s chassis was incredibly satisfying. And if Hamato was a little aggressive in offlining it, well, O’Neil didn’t comment; she took point, moving them toward the stairwell with him watching her six.

Moving in lockstep, they pressed forward. It was almost like old times.

But it was going to take more than coordination to make it out of here. “You bring any EMPs?” he asked. “Party poppers?”

“Hoboken, you said no more grenades.”

And two hours after Hoboken, he’d thought she was _dead_. He was about to bitch that out of all the times, she’d choose _then_ to listen to him, when a memory of hers tickled his cortex: prepping his gear, zipping the tubes into his left-side thigh-pocket _._ And whaddaya know. “Yeah, you’re a _riot_ ,” he scoffed.

“Bet’cher green ass I am.”

“And you’re bad at math. There’s no way to make it here from Fort Dix in an hour.”

No retort. Not even a _screw you,_ and Hamato was left gaping at her back. “You’re _AWOHL?”_

“Nobody was doing shit,” she spat.

 _“You?!_ ”

“Because nobody was doing shit! Brass talks out of both sides of the mouth, and your brothers wouldn’t give me the time of day. _So I walked_.” She _had_ walked, found him through their connection: he tasted thin hope and the minty sense of his own mind, calling to hers. “And good thing I did, because _Jones_ gave me the heads-up they were gonna crater this place! And nobody said _word_ _one_ about exfil for friendlies. Not the L-T, not Leo, _nobody._ ”

That... stung. But the chance to take out Saki’s primary forces, in one go? _Damn._ Even he had to admit it would have been worth it, except - now they were _both_ in danger while she dragged his ass away from the bullseye, _damnit,_ O’Neil, _why?_

Something spicy breezed his mind before the trapdoor slammed, wrongness trailing the icy _don’t you dare._

Was she doing this on purpose?

It enraged him further. “So you rushed in,” he snarled, “with - what, _hope_ and half-a-plan?”

“That and _pants_ is more than you had ten minutes ago.”

“No support. _No back-up_ -”

“I’m working without a net here, Hamato! And my half-a-plan is the only shot of getting off of this rock before the new zipcode is _hell,_ so -” her lips twisted there with a private, bitter humour, “excuse me for being a little light on _Plan B_.”

A year ago, her eyes would have glittered through the punchline, as the jokester to his stodgy straight man. But there wasn’t a degree of warmth in her gaze. The blue wintered through him and the difference left him reeling; she’d taken his coldness for her own.

 _No,_ he admitted, _he’d gifted it to her, slowly._

Hamato fought to keep his stomach from turning inside out. She shoved his nausea back down. “Stairwell door,” he rasped. “On your go.”

“Go.”

They were penned in, but they were pretty damn amazing.

Those poppers weren’t much damage, but they made clearing the landing a cake-walk for him while O’Neil sprinted ahead. His efficiency earned them a twenty-second jump on the heavies moving in. 

They came from up _and_ down.

One flight up, his partner let enough soldiers surround her to drop a grenade of her own. The force of her power, _BOOM_ , and human soldiers fell sobbing, incoherent, minds lost.

Hamato teetered below. Partially shielded by their connection, he wasn’t _fine,_ but - 

Was that what she wore under her skin? Fear and anger and heartbreak carved into shrapnel in a crippling arc skyward -

_BOOM._

He choked on self-loathing he hadn’t sown, but had watered in her until it thrived.

O’Neil emptied clips into bots. Sprinted into another throng.

_BOOM._

His bones wanted to weep, curl up and wither into dust.

They stepped over bodies, O’Neil clearing the way: she kept shooting, kept dropping bots and picking up fresh weapons as they leap-frogged their way to the roof. He caught the next wave up ahead of her: he tossed a flash-grenade up the next landing, pictured her snagging it, pulling pin and underhanding over there -

\- and she did, without a word. He felt the pin dangle on her knuckle before she dropped it with a _tink,_ ducked under the flash of light and sound.

She saw the bot zooming up the empty stairwell before he did. With her eyes, he watched himself homerun it out of commission before it could get the drop on him. “Booyah,” she echoed across the span.

Out-manned and out-gunned, but together? They were just _killing it._

But her shields were faltering, and with each assault he was getting more emotional bleed-over. Exhaustion dogged him, and her counters flagged in response. Her center of gravity was off-kilter and that curse was salty behind her teeth as he watched himself, _herself,_ go hand-to-hand: one soldier went down just in time for another to catch her in a stumble with a knife across the vest, and _another damn bot_ -

She pictured his hands grabbing for a knife, flicking it end over end into the soldier’s neck. Slicing his naginata through a Legion, he spun, flung it like a javelin up through the stairwell; O’Neil hit the deck before the Foot soldier skewered with a wet _thunk._

He felt her appreciation without words as she offlined the last bot with a bullet to the optical sensor. It tumbled over the rail with a feeble whirr, and then, all was quiet.

Forty combatants. Ten stories. They’d tore through them like paper, a one-eyed mutant and a psychic. _Damn._

He wondered how good they could have been if, _just once,_ he’d welcomed this connection. If he hadn’t been a stupid, selfish creature, a child screaming at the ocean because he feared drowning. 

How good could they have been _together,_ if only he’d let them?

“We’re on the clock!” Above him, O’Neil snarled, “No time for your brooding bullshit -”

She deserved his regrets, his sincerity, she deserved the chance to carve his heart from his chest herself. _And words,_ she deserved all the words, she deserved _groveling,_ but they were twenty steps from the door to the roof. “When we’re clear of here, I’m going to kiss you. Will you let me?”

“ _No._ ”

“O’Neil - _April_. Please.” He had to. He _had_ to -

For the first time, he reached for her mind with his. _Don’t!_ blasted his brain, tried to wall him out, but he had to, had to -

The spice he’d smelled, but couldn't name - cookies her mother’s-mother baked for high holy days. _Cinnamon._ It rippled with a sense of togetherness and gratitude and belonging: feelings she’d wanted to share with him, once upon a time.

This was amazing. Why had he - how could he have feared this _connection?_ Their first time together - he should have done this that very night. Or when she kissed him. Or joked about him polishing his bō, or saluted him with that punchy grin, _damn, he might have loved her even then_ , if he’d have only been brave enough to try.

“Stop!” Misery clogged the space between her ribs, his. That wall was going from brick to paper. _Don’t touch, don’t touch!_

Hamato _pushed_ , threw himself into their shared state completely. He dove headlong into her emotions, her memories floating close.

No brakes, all acceleration.

“Don’t -”

 _‘Don’t.’_ This close, wearing each other’s sweat, it was hard not to overhear his thoughts. _‘_ _Don’t let her in, don’t let her trap you with that psychic bullshit -’_

 _she would never_ , he knew it with her certainty

Dawn broke, purple and breathless. Fear squeezed her chest as she stole past the GW choke point. Stealth was harder with her eye-socket burning - whoever had him had _done_ _that_ to him _,_ and who knew what else. She wished she could push comfort through her side of the bond, wished he would have allowed even that, but -

_consent was paramount, the first thing a psychic learned_

“Hamato - please!”

“Please,” she gasped for more, but he fucked her to the mantra - ' _keep her out, keep her out' -_ and she choked on the sound of his name.

 _because everything was shared_ _on both sides of the connection_

“- damnit, O’Neil, is everything a joke to you?”

“Well, if my choices are _die_ or _keep laughing_ , guess which one I’m -”

_everything she touched_

Weight at her back, that was _him_ , crushing her into the pavement. His shell shielded her from most of the blast, his breath warm reassurance on cheek. Another “ _damnit, O’Neil!_ ” - she really ought to keep a tally of those - but when the debris settled, his arms were still tight around her.

_became part of them both_

In his arms, the ash and snow of his thoughts left her feeling stained, _dirty._ Her body spasmed around pleasure carved hollow.

_everything_

Love filled her like the horizon, so expansive and free it pricked tears in his eyes and pulled his chest tight, sharper and brighter than anything he’d ever known. It was instinct to open herself, to press tender kisses against that strange, wide jaw and share herself, her whole self -

_everything_

A roll tucked against her navel from the inside, insistent, new, and partially aware; she tried to soothe it without bitterness, and locked the Kevlar down tight.

For a second, his ears rang, and he could have sworn he heard her scream.

So thin that his green skin looked tight, and his head rolled listlessly, and but _he was okay, he was alright,_ and she’d never felt so weak with relief - and then he wished her away. “I want you in my arms, O’Neil,” he snarled, “not my head.”

 _“_ I said _STOP!_ ”

Betrayal viced his guts so hard he doubled over with it. This was - he was sharing her pain, tasting the poison he’d poured it past her lips from the very first. “I’m sorry,” he gasped weakly. “So sorry. I just wanted -”

Above him, O’Neil grabbed, _no, she twisted,_ and his eye-socket, his whole skull filled with pressure. A hot shearing ripped something between his ears, and the world whined supersonic for a horrible eternity.

Copper flooded his mouth. When he could finally stand, he was grateful he hadn’t bit through his tongue. “I’m -” gonna hurl, he was gonna throw up, _oh damn_ \- “O’Neil?” 

“Screw you, Hamato.” She was swaying, _shaking_ with fury, and he was - viewing her with a single eye. His dual-perspective had been torn flat. And that loving horizon was fading inside him, like her grief, her self-loathing, cinnamon, her body heat from the sheets. He reached out for her across their -

No wall. No connection. _Nothing_.

He couldn’t feel _her._

Damn, _oh damn_ , what had he _done?_

“April.” With bloodless lips, he called her name again, in fear and desperation. “April, I’m -”

“Get to the chopper. Don’t die. And _stay out_ of my head.” It tasted final. With that, she marched up the final flight of steps, and kicked out the door to the roof.

There were wet tracks chilling daggers on his face. He pressed his fingers to his eyelids, and bit back a groan like screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: drug references, medical horror, very bad psychic etiquette, much angst.  
> Oh, Hamato. Why.
> 
> Musical inspiration for this chapter comes from 'Afraid of Heights' by Billy Talent.


	6. Remembrance and Everything After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s starting to remember.

Sometimes, they wander through cities her Oak King has never seen. Most are places she traveled in the _before_ , some in the _after_ as a scatter of molecules. Sometimes, he surprises her with memorized landmarks and a tour of somewhere new. It makes him happy when they pretend to be people, so she indulges him, even though most of the time she’s struggling to remember how.

Sometimes, they revisit shared memories: he likes to borrow her old apartment to pour coffee and autumn over their senses, and she brings him back to the lab from his youth, where they pore over experiments and graphite shavings and the shape of one another in profile. His flush of pleasure when he notices her staring is the most precious thing in the universe. She does it often.

She’s starting to remember. There are things she recalls with sharp clarity: what it was to _yearn,_ to feel in secret, to love quietly before it was a thing shared. It makes her dare more than platonic touches now, and memories old and new are starting to blend, but that’s a problem for another day.

They don’t often revisit their first encounters in the _after._ They leave him sour and sad, feeling something he calls _guilt_ , and that’s… something she doesn’t really understand anymore.

Sometimes, they watch sunrises unfold from different places across the universe. She catches his stray thought to dust off that old tattoo gun and connect the broken line of marks in his left elbow into the arrow constellation they found on Kepler-452b - yes, he has decided, and he’ll do it three days from now. It will be a nice surprise.

Sometimes, she takes him on tours of his brain. She misses being inside him; the endless possibility of his mind is a delight, and his singular, incredible genetics - she could get lost in them and never grow bored. That first adventure, he’d found it quite eerie and disconcerting, but now as he toils out there in the real and he feels those particular neurons fire - _now_ he can recognize them as some of her favourite places of him. And it makes him smile, which - _joy_ , that incandescent flicker, his smile gives her _joy_ _._

Sometimes, she can’t remember what a body _is_ , and he has to fight her hysteria as he rebuilds them both from their aortas to their cuticles.

They built a cottage together once. It’s somewhere coastal and verdant and cool, always the perfect temperature to wrap a cashmere sweater around themselves and luxuriate. The fire never needs tending, and the shelves hold all her Oak King’s favourite books, the ones he knows by heart. They spend whole days there whenever they want to smell rain and pine and each other.

And the bed is always freshly made - unless it isn’t.

She thinks, someday, she might be able steep herself in enough of him to carry her through the eons of emptiness while they’re apart.

Sometimes, she can almost touch him out there in the real. In the small, late hours, when his mind is at rest, she can feel his bed as if she were laying next to him. She feels him remembering _her_ , who she is now instead of the one that he lost, and it fills her like a star being reborn. She can feel herself unfurling in his mind in laughter and wonder, in little kisses, in caresses and clasps and cataclysms of involuntary spasms and curiosity and care and complete adoration. _Yearning_ , she feels it then most, in the moments that she can almost reach him.

She feels his green fingers press against marks she never left, and they both feel love spill over with unbearable melancholy.

Sometimes, they kiss until they can’t keep their selves straight.

Sometimes, they just lay together like cats in patches of remembered sunlight, fingers entwined. 

Sometimes, it’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for this chapter is 'Recovery' by Alexandr Misko


	7. Wavelength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You and angelcakes, you guys not-talking or something?”  
> “What do you mean? April and I talk all the time.”

The morning after the Kraang were zapped back to dimensions unknown, April ran the update of the Lair’s security systems. When Don pressed her on how she remembered all his protocols, she could only shake her head.

“I mean, I just did. I swear, Donnie, I must have watched you run it a billion times.” She pressed her lips together, felt the glossy colour stick like her unease. “Everything worked, right? No harm done.”

“Still,” he’d grumbled; and yeah, she definitely should have asked before touching anything. He changed all his passwords, and was wary of her even _glancing_ at his screens for days.

She apologized with new conical burrs for his coffee grinder, and they never spoke of it again.

“But Donnie already said thank you,” she frowned at Leo. Seriously, who made him the _manners police?_ “I heard him. Now _you,_ say: _I’m sorry, Donnie._ ”

Why were her fingers so cold nowadays? It was eighty degrees out here.

“Donnie?”

On her fire escape, her lanky turtle friend held up a flashdrive and a carton of takeout. “Wait, spicy noodles? How did you know?”

“Ninja,” he shrugged, with a small, soft grin. “Observation is part of the job.”

“Well, get in here, Mister Ninja.” She took both items from Donnie as he eased his shell through the window. “And thank you. Seriously, you are a _lifesaver._ ”

Counting to twenty, over and over and - _seriously, April_ , _why?_

Time to switch to decaf.

“ _Ohmygosh_ , angelcakes, when you guys answered in stereo, Leo _freaked!_ Like, jumped right outta his shell!”

_Oh Darwin,_ his calves, the balls of his feet were _on_ _fire_ , _why?_

The morning after they left the Hashi, it was Raph who had harsh words for him. “Who do you think you are, mouthing off to Fearless like that?”

“ _Me?!_ He’s the one who decided to be bedtime police! Do you have any idea how patronizing that is? Somebody get him a cat or something, give him a more appropriate outlet for his maternal instincts. Seriously -”

Raph snorted so hard he might have ruptured something. “When’d you grow a sense of humour?”

“I -” Deeply unnerved, Donnie realized the sharp words hadn’t tasted foreign at all. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sure it’ll fade by morning.” With good humor, he pointed Donnie up toward the bedrooms. “Shut-eye. Six hours straight, or I’m ratting you out.”

“- and she’s all like, ‘ _I’ll concede that point, Casey_ ,’ which - _ugh!_ ” Jones made another three-point shot into the waste bin with a crumpled napkin. “She gets _that mad_ and she starts to sound like _you_ , Don. It’s freaking _weird_ -”

It seemed inconceivable his brothers hadn’t heard her say goodnight; April was, and he meant this with utmost respect, always the loudest voice in the room.

The morning after her period started, Don frowned and wheeled his work stool behind her. Green knuckles fisted low on her spine. As they drew out toward her hips, April found her words collapsing on themselves. “Tha - haaah, you’re - _Guh!”_

“More? Or less?”

“ _Muh_.”

Back cramps were the worst, deep and pernicious, clawing their way from her uterus to her spine; tension was the only thing keeping her upright this morning. Her next groan melted under the glorious counter-pressure. “How?” Her tongue was clumsy with relief. “Seriously, how do you always - _hnn_ \- know?”

“Observation. You’re pretty consistent,” he murmured. “Get you the heating pad?”

“ _Nuh_.” She leaned back against his hands, a girl dissolved into a puddle of gratitude. 

Again, he pressed, and sighed as if her relief was his own. 

The bagel, the egg-salad, now even his _coffee_ tasted like strawberries. _That’s it,_ he decided: Mike’s surprisewiches _must_ be stopped.

“You and angelcakes, you guys not talking or something?”

“What do you mean? April and I talk all the time.”

The ivory gown was lovely, but _April_ was absolutely radiant; Donnie swore he could feel every inch of his best friend’s joy.

Their first morning as newlyweds, Casey woke her up with coffee. “Some sugar for my honey.”

She nearly gagged on the first sip _._ _Hazelnut creamer_ , that was Donnie’s thing.

When had she started -

“And speaks Japanese. Of course.” Vern adjusted the camera lens. “I’ll say again, O’Neil, you’re one complicated chick.”

Under twelve feet of concrete and sixteen city blocks, he heard her front door slam.

“Yo, Donnie - who’re you talking to, man?”

“Nobody. Sorry.”

Midday, her body tingled with a delight that didn’t belong to her.

_April, how do you always know?_

“Who I’ve _turned into?_ This is _who I am_ , Casey! You’d rather I remain juvenile and emotionally handicapped, like -”

“Oh sure, turn this around on me -”

“- and your insecurity is _stunning_ and I’m thoroughly -”

“And I’m freaking sick of - don’t you walk away from me!”

“Don.”

Donnie opened his eyes to see Leo, not Casey, before him. His ears were still ringing. “You okay, buddy?”

Sometimes she’d look down, shocked to find five fingers instead of three.

“My son, your spirit has been so uneasy as late.”

She learned to breathe lightly around his bruised ribs.

“ _Cut it out_ , you two,” Leo glared, “that twin thing, it isn’t funny anymore!”

Five.

_No, four and a thumb, the thumb is not a -_

Donnie, seriously, this is _not_ time for debate!

“ - feels like there’s three of us in this marriage and I’m _freaking sick of it_ -”

He choked back bitter pride in how her signature didn’t wobble from his fingertips anymore.

_How do you always know?_

Laying her head on her arms, Donnie blinked tears from her lashes - 

“I’m fine, guys.” But it was _his_ voice, not _hers_. She pushed his glasses up her nose. “Seriously, everything’s - fine.”

_I just know, April. I always know when it’s you._

His forehead pressed to hers from miles away, and she tasted his split lip, her lipgloss and a sweet, shared relief. No words, because they were one mind, working in complete synchronicity.

 _Perfect_.

They were perfect, and they hadn’t even begun.

The morning after, they finally accepted it.

“Are you guys still not talking?”

They didn’t need to, not ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspiration for this chapter was 'Sweater Weather' by Pentatonix. I heard it, and immediately felt it for these two.


End file.
